Institutional investors accounted for a record 72% of Wintermute’s spot over-the-counter (OTC) trading volume in the first half of 2026, while Bitcoin perpetual activity slumped to its lowest level since 2023, painting a picture of a crypto market split between professional quiet accumulation and retail-driven stagnation.
Wintermute’s figure, released July 30, marks a steady climb from 59% in H1 2025 and 61% in H2 2025. The jump highlights a broader shift toward private trading desks and exchange-traded products, as hedge funds, asset managers, and corporate treasuries seek to execute large orders without moving public order books. OTC trading offers privacy, reduced slippage, and flexible settlement — advantages that are drawing deep-pocketed players away from centralized exchanges for significant transactions.
While institutions are increasingly comfortable on private venues, public market activity tells a different story. Bitcoin perpetual trading volumes on Binance and Bybit fell to a 30-day average of $10.8 billion as of Aug. 10, a three-year low, according to K33 Research. Only 5% of trading days since January 2021 have been quieter. Spot volumes declined as well, averaging $1.8 billion daily over the past week, the weakest since February 2024. Bitcoin’s seven-day volatility collapsed to 0.6%, the lowest since Christmas 2025.
K33’s Vetle Lunde described the environment as a “self-reinforcing circle of hibernation,” where thin trading begets lower incentive to participate. Yet, perpetual open interest remains elevated at around 300,000 BTC, well above the 2026 average of 288,000 BTC. This combination of high leverage and muted price action increases the risk of sharp liquidation-driven moves, Lunde warned, especially with the July U.S. Consumer Price Index report due Wednesday. Economists expect headline CPI to rise 3.4% year-over-year, and markets are pricing in a roughly 50% chance of a 25-basis-point rate hike at the Fed’s September meeting.
Institutional behavior further deepens the divergence. Wintermute found that the number of unique tokens traded by institutional clients grew only 24% from H1 2024 to H1 2026, compared to a 76% expansion among retail traders. Big players remain concentrated in Bitcoin and Ether, while retail explores the long tail of altcoins. Altcoin options notional surged 3.4 times from H2 2025, and spot ETF inflows reached $623 million in early May, including $194 million into Morgan Stanley’s new Bitcoin fund — much of it bypassing public exchange order books entirely.
The data suggests that liquidity is fragmenting: institutions transact quietly on OTC desks and through ETFs, while the visible spot market languishes. Whether institutional appetite will broaden beyond the largest assets remains an open question, but for now, the market is marked by record private volumes on one side and multi-year public trading lows on the other.
